


Rumor

by scy



Category: Gossip Girl
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-01
Updated: 2010-01-01
Packaged: 2017-10-05 14:08:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/42552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scy/pseuds/scy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Serena sent Dan the article</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rumor

**Author's Note:**

> aurora_84 made happy noises when I mentioned the idea, so this is for you, hon.

Serena sent him the article. To be fair, Dan knew better than to open up attachments from her that had a lot of exclamation points in the title, but in his defense, he was just through with a deadline and hadn't sleep in two days. It served him right, though, because when he read it, Dan sent an email back asking Serena why she thought he'd care.

"Because I thought you needed a reminder, some things never change," Serena said when she called him five minutes later.

"Were you sitting around waiting for me to read this?" Dan asked.

"Yes."

"Why?"

"It's Saturday, I'm bored, and I know you needed a distraction," Serena said.

"I made my deadline."

"Great, then Peggy won't kill you."

"Peggy loves me."

"She's your editor, of course she does, but she has to listen to you bitch and moan and miss deadlines. You have a love-hate relationship."

"We do not," Dan said weakly. Peggy was like his aunt, who showed up at his house with drafts of manuscripts corrected in red pen, and a fierce look on her face that always made him wish she'd called ahead so he could avoid her. But, she also brought muffins, coffee, and made sure he actually slept while he was working.

"Right," Serena said. "So what did you think?"

Dan scrolled down the page and stared at the article again. "Charles Bass, CEO of Bass Industries in gay relationship?"

"Yes."

"Why do I care about this?" Dan read the second paragraph again. "Does Blair know?"

"Know what?"

"That Chuck might be cheating on her. Wait, it's Chuck, of course he is. I just didn't think he'd go for guys."

"You didn't?" Serena sounded surprised.

"No, why would I?"

"I thought, you and Chuck, back in school-" Serena didn't finish her sentence, and Dan sat upright, suddenly very awake.

"Serena, what's going on?"

"Nothing."

Dan knew better than to trust Serena when she sounded that innocent, luckily she was on the other side of the country, he'd fallen for the sweet expression that went with that tone too many times. "Serena."

"It's nothing."

Patience paid off, and so Dan waited on his end of the line while Serena silently debated what she should say, and finally what she had to say got the better of her.

"It's just, when you two hung out-"

"Which we did all the time, as you know," Dan said. "We weren't friends, Serena."

"You don't have to be friends for that."

"For what?" His confusion gave way to suspicions and Dan blinked. "Are you saying that I should have known Chuck could be gay?"

"He's not gay, Dan."

"Then what's the-"

"He's bi." A long pause. "Which I guess you didn't know."

"No, I had no idea."

"Oh."

"Serena, what the hell?" He was raising his voice, but considering the history of drama that Serena and her friends had, and the number of times that Dan had gotten pulled into it, whether he wanted to be or not, he thought he had reason to be worried.

"Don't freak out, Dan, but I just thought that you and Chuck had something going on."

"Like we were secretly going out?"

"Yeah."

"Do you have a concussion?" Dan asked.

"Hey, don't be rude," Serena said.

"An old girlfriend just told me that she thinks I was sleeping with her best friend's boyfriend."

Serena waited for Dan to say something else, and when he didn't, she made a frustrated noise. "It's not a big deal, Dan, really, unless you have a problem with it."

Dan winced, he knew what she was saying beyond the obvious. "Serena, I don't care if Chuck sleeps with men. As far as I know, there was never a woman he wouldn't at least go after, so this makes total sense, why cut himself off from a group of people he can get off with?"

That wasn't all of it. There had been a few days when they were in school when Dan had gotten fed up with his regular routine and had gone after a change in the form of Chuck Bass' life. It had been about getting a story, most of it, but he had wanted to know how somebody like Chuck lived, and part of that had involved a lot of alcohol and there were a few blank spaces in his memory book that ended in him being very close to Chuck. The problem was, he didn't know if that had gone any further. Some of that worry must have been audible to Serena because she spoke up.

"Are you going to call Chuck?"

"What? No."

"I have his number, not the one that the secretary screens, you know, the one to his cell," Serena said.

Dan could hear her clicking her tongue like a clock counting down and he shrugged. "Sure, fine, what's his number?"

"Hello?" Chuck said.

Dan swallowed hard. "Hey, Chuck, it's Dan, Dan Humphrey."

"I assume you called to talk to me and not breathe in my ear," Chuck said. "Some people might beg for the privilege, but I do charge for my time, and you're wasting it."

"Sorry, I just called to see how you were doing."

Some silences were very loud, which didn't make sense, but to Dan, Chuck's lack of words said 'why am I listening to this moron babble when I could be having sex or making money, or both?' After that, the conversation couldn't resurrect itself, and Dan said goodbye as quickly as possible.

After that, still needing to know what was going on, Dan did the only thing he could. He got started on a novel outline, discarded it, started another, and a week later, he called Blair.

She must have talked to Serena first, because she set the phone down, and he swore he heard giggling before she picked the receiver up again. "Are you calling to ask if my husband has been having sex with men and not telling me?"

"Uh."

"I promise you, Dan, that if Chuck is going to have sex with a man and wants to share, I am the first person he calls. Now, what else can I help you with?"

After six minutes of small talk, Dan hung up, all caught up on gossip, and several things he could hold over Serena's head for years, and nursing a headache. He had gotten a rundown of how an open marriage worked, more detail on how he could, in fact, participate, and Blair had laughed at him, and then told him to stop being a wuss and to go and get her husband into bed. She had promised she wouldn't expect pictures, not the first time, and that's when Dan declared he had an emergency with his printer.

"Have fun," Blair said, and Dan dropped his phone on his desk and then put his head down and began to hit it very gently against the convenient flat surface. He was just thinking about maybe crawling into bed or something equally juvenile when he heard the door open.

"Daniel, what are you doing?"

If Dan lifted his head, he'd have to acknowledge that Chuck Bass was standing in his office, after having his chauffeur drive him from wherever he'd been making money. Dan groaned and kept his head down. "I'm thinking."

"Hitting your head would normally be counterproductive, but maybe with you it actually helps," Chuck said. He sat down and Dan looked up to see him smirking.

"What do you want, Chuck?"

"My wife called to tell me that you wanted to see me."

"Anything else?"

"Nothing out of the ordinary, other than her revelation that you have apparently been secretly in love with me and have only now come to your senses."

"I have not, and she's been talking to Serena too much," Dan said.

Chuck picked up a paperweight, something Jenny had given Dan last year and turned it over in his hands. "She's not the only one."

"Oh no." There were things Dan might, under bribery or the influence of more than a few beers, admit to missing, but Chuck's smirk wasn't one of them.

"Yes, my stepsister had a lot to say on the subject." Chuck tossed the paperweight from one hand to the other.

"I wouldn't listen to her."

"No? I thought you were supposed to listen to your family."

"You don't have to believe what they tell you."

"I don't accept anything without personal corroboration," Chuck said, and it was unfair that him knowing how to use words properly made Dan pay closer attention. "That's why I'm here."

"The phone works well."

"Not with you, remember, we tried that."

"Yeah." Dan sat up all the way, and stared at Chuck, who was wearing a suit, and looked professional, like he ran a company and made decisions, and generally did not sleep with people during his lunch break.

"Are you skipping work?"

"I run the company, Humphrey, I can make my own schedule."

"So you thought you'd come to see me."

"We can talk," Chuck said.

"What else would we do?" Dan asked, and then shook his head firmly. "No, this is Serena's thing, and Blair's I am not interested. There is no crush, I have not been curious, or whatever they told you. I'm just fine."

Chuck glanced around the room, and Dan hadn't cared that it wasn't huge and full of heavy expensive furniture when he decorated it, and he didn't now.

"This house fits you, Humphrey."

"Thanks, Bass." If they were going by last names, then Dan was going to make sure Chuck knew he was in on it.

"Well, we can sit around and talk, or we can get this out of our systems," Chuck said as he set the paperweight back on Dan's desk.

"You don't even work at being romantic anymore, do you?" Dan said, and as he leaned over to grab the papers on his desk, Chuck reached out and put his hand on top of Dan's.

"It bothers you, not remembering if we had sex, and I think we should fix that."

"By doing something that we never did in the first place?" Dan asked.

"Just because you couldn't admit what you wanted back then didn't mean I didn't know it."

Dan gave him an incredulous and admiring look. "I hope you have your ego declared as one of your assets."

"I do, actually," Chuck said. "Come on, Daniel, have you changed at all?"

"You haven't."

"I don't need to, I know who I am." He smiled. "I'm Chuck Bass."

Through school, and everything that had come after it, Dan had tried to prove himself to a lot of people, until he realized that he was trying too hard, and that he really knew what he wanted all along. That made him grin back at Chuck. "I'm not saying you're right."

"That would be too much for you," Chuck said, but his mouth was still turned up at the corner.

"I'm saying you can try and prove it," Dan said, and smirked back.


End file.
